Can Naples reinvent itself as a tech capital? | Hacker News Reader

Can Naples reinvent itself as a tech capital?

bbc.com

42 pointsatomical57 comments

I have done some work with a good friend and his company which is located near Naples.

No, this won't happen.

That place is pure chaos. It is closer to a so-called developing nation (ethiopia, guatemala) than a "European Country". It is filthy, garbage everywhere, chaos drivers, mafia infiltrating everything; Nothing really works as well as it should; absolute corruption at every level of society.

Sure, Naples has a beautiful city center, and there are some impressive technical universities around. But this is not enough.

This is excessively downbeat. Napoli is not Ethiopia, come on; at the very least, it is under EU jurisdiction, which means access to EU grants and markets. Italy has its problems and Napoli adds some more on top, but it’s not a third-world city.

Napoli is considered to be "the black sheep" in Italy (disclaimer: I'm italian). People drive on sidewalks, 3 people (full family on scooters) without helmet (that was the first thing I saw while getting in). It's also much more terrible at mafia level than you can think of.

> It is filthy, garbage everywhere, chaos drivers, mafia infiltrating everything; Nothing really works as well as it should; absolute corruption at every level of society. Sure, Naples has a beautiful city center, and there are some impressive technical universities around.

Sounds a lot like San Francisco to me /s

Are you talking about the Bronx in New York?

No, it can't. Mafia won't allow it and every decent human being born out of that city moves out of it sooner rather than later

This is my impression as well.

Only city in the EU that I've felt unsafe in, granted I was only passing through so that feeling was probably just a manifestation of the city's reputation.

Really? There are worse EU cities regarding security.

Berlin and Leipzig, for starters, both of which are major startup capitals.

Huh? I have never ever felt unsafe in those. What areas are unsafe in Berlin?

If you can read German,

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/berlin/polizei/die-23-unsich...

https://www.morgenpost.de/berlin/article210846209/An-diesen-...

Thank you, I can manage. Are these considered serious newspapers?

Yes, they are not like Bild and friends.

moved to Berlin 2 years ago. Very safe city indeed.

7 years here, never felt unsecure

I'm not saying Naples is the least safe city in the EU, or in western Europe, by all means, but it does have a reputation for being 1) unsafe for tourists due to petty crimes like pickpocketing and 2) being run by the mafia.

This reputation might be undeserved, at least as far as technologists and startups are concerned, but it is still something that would influence my decision on whether I'd move there or not. Other tech hubs in Europe, such as Berlin and Amsterdam, does not have that kind of reputation.

They might not have that reputation, but they surely have no-go neighborhoods, unless you happen to know people living there as safe conduit, including Berlin and Amsterdam.

I wonder how important Naples's local issues really are for a tech startup. Naples has a pretty bad reputation, but it's mainly about public services like waste collection, sanitation, water and infrastructure.

If I were starting a construction company or a restaurant there I might be concerned about mafia involvement, but as a tech company I worry more abut Italy's general bureaucracy and its broken legal system.

The somewhat baffling political situation doesn't exactly inspire confidence either (although I suppose I shouldn't be throwing stones from my UK glass house in that respect)

One of the reasons that Berlin is so popular is that everything works smoothly (everything is relative, of course), and it has a great, multicultural social life.

Neither of these apply to Naples.

The first applies for sure, but if you think Naples isn't multicultural and social then you haven't spent much time here or aren't paying attention to the faces and habits of people in the city. There are people from everywhere here, and lots of them.

This city is hypersocial to the point that it exhausts visitors from places like Berlin and the states. Thousands of people gather together spontaneously any night of the week in the public spaces in the city center. You cannot walk two minutes without the chance of talking to someone.

Salaries in Italy are simply not high enough to attract or retain talent, in my opinion

They are totally abysmal. If you want to live somewhere nice and work remote it isn't bad. But local wages are awful.

You are underestimating italian talent. Italy is fully of hungry minds and determined people and that applies even more in Naples where opportunities are scarce.

Is it possible that instead of underestimating Italian talent, parent is carefully considering the immense power, value, skill, hunger, and determination of Italian talent? Especially when those incredible people have ready access to a sizable number of other places that pay better!

I've personally met more than one absolutely brilliant Italian engineer... who lives in London.

Italy has a massive brain drain problem. Many university educated professionals live overseas.

That is exactly what I meant

* >The University of Naples, the first university in Europe dedicated to training secular administrators,

* >Naples became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861 as part of the Italian unification, ending the era of Bourbon rule. The kingdom of the Two Sicilies had been wealthy, and as many as 443.2 million ducats were taken from the old kingdom's banks as a contribution to the new Italian treasury.

* >by 1884, Naples was still the largest city in Italy with 496,499 inhabitants, or roughly 64,000 per square kilometre (more than twice the population density of Paris)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naples

I had no idea that Naples had been that advanced. Building on that history, they should have a huge potential. Unfortunately, I don't see how they can recreate their strategic advantage the way they do.

The Mediterranean Sea was the Internet before the industrial revolution. Naples is an expression of that network effect. Which network can they offer today? Won't they suffer the same problem as India, that they educate programmers who will take the first opportunity to move to Silicon Valley?

Comparing Italy to India is a disproportionate

it is true that a lot good Italian programmers go abroad looking for better wages. Source: I'm one of them (Italian, not good, that is).

Silicon Valley has a global pull and a lot of programmers will end up there regardless of nationality.

Italian programmers can go easily to other places, and the internal market is not too bad as well, so I guess most don't bother looking to go to SV

Sure, I wasn't thinking about SV. Europe is big and has a lot of opportunities with better salaries. London, where I live, is just around the corner for an Italian (at least for now).

“Building on that history, they should have a huge potential.“

One could argue that history might actually hinder urban development.

edit: In any case, I wish Naples the best of luck, as Europe needs more tech startups.

Naples was completely fucked by Italian unification.

I doubt it would be allowed to unfuck itself.

Such a pointless story. Saying that startups can only succeed in SV, London or Berlin is myopic. There are plenty of startup successes (around the US and around Europe) proving this wrong.

Every location has its advantages and its disadvantages - you play the best cards you get, and the only sure way not to win is to not play at all.

Yes, but not by companies investing. This is a great place to live, and if you have remote work you will live really well with minimal costs. It is just too corrupt and anarchic to be a good target for investment. The idea of a company headquarters here is simply impossible. It would have to be placed out in the middle of nowhere.

Naples can be a tech hub, but in the leftist anarchist community sense rather than the big business sense. People will have to choose to do so. From what little I've seen this does seem to be happening already.

the main things, i think, necessary to make somewhere a great location for a startup are public infrastructure and talent, i dont know anything about naples, but i wonder first and foremost how good the local talent is, and second how well it can attract talent. is the airport accessible to direct flights to say sfo, etc. are there incentives to place datacenters, although not a hard requirement because of aws, gcp ovmh, but it helps, i imagine it’s a volcanic zone, so probably not. look at all the great startup cities in the world and you’ll find strong universities that have great talent, the univiersities help to lure the talent, the companies help to keep them.

obviously this has lots of ties with government where they could make things easier.

from the first picture, it looks like a great place to live on the mediterannean, but the crime and filth sounds bad.

i would add to this, the culture must embrace entrepreneurialism, like tokyo is a great place in terms of infrastructure, but the society is more bent on having salarymen that have stable careers, so the startup scene is more stagnant than other places where the schools/talent arent as good and access to sfo, other places are great.

Italy has a problem attracting talent, capital, and companies even in the "better" and more developed areas. How can Naples fare? The article mentions student academies, which is the only way it can manage since salaries would be way too low for experienced workers.

I'm Italian and no, it can't (would love for the people of Naples to prove me wrong though)

Yes they can, if politics change its behaviour.

Does it need to?

Instant advantage towards the two pizza rule.

Coincidentally there is a stable US Navy base in Naples.

Don't turn Naples in another gentrified hellhole like you did with Lisbon.

What happened in Lisbon?

Prosperity.

Gentrification, mass tourism and special privilege for some people that can afford to buy entire buildings are causing major social issues: - https://www.euronews.com/2017/09/19/lisbon-s-tourism-magnet-... - http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/president-promulgates-te...

People using words like "prosperity" either don't live here, or especially don't work for a living here...

This sounds like AirBnB effects again :(

the major downside of globalization is you're no longer just dealing with demand from the local region

That, and the fact that the government has decided to keep giving away EU visas to people from geographies that are notorious for corruption (e.g. Brasil, Angola, China) in exchange for meager (500K€) real estate "investments" [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/18/portugal-golde...

The city will definitely resist. Its the most anarchic place I know of in the EU. Life here is as dirty and violent as it is lyrical, warm, and rich.

It will be hard to truly gentrify this place. There are not too many gentrifier types I know who would be excited to live in a basso: https://it.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basso_(Napoli)

But maybe that will change.

The city would only benefit from more thinkers, technologists, scientists, and artists. You are right that the dream of attracting them may be the seed of a folly that will undermine the culture of the city, which is dazzlingly beautiful and shockingly ugly at the same time.

There are some deep cultural problems here, but gentrification is only going to make these worse. They are related to being ruled by many invaders and monarchs basically since forever. The tech lords seem no different to me. Investment is good, but if it is driven through local channels it will only entrench the current system, whose most powerful participants, who are completely uninterested in improving the quality of life locally.

> The city would only benefit from more thinkers, technologists, scientists, and artists.

With the stranglehold the Catholic Church has on the city, this is not going to happen.

All those abandoned churches are just hackerspaces in waiting.

More questions for headlines. Just clickbait pretending to be a news article. You would think that the BBC would be immune to this form of "journalism" since they are an established news company backed by taxpayer money.

But since the BBC asked, I'll apply Betteridge's Law and simply answer no. Did I pass?

Please keep such madness out of the EU...

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